


A beautiful world

by lexi_con



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Disease, M/M, Shigatsu wa kimi no uso AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-09
Updated: 2015-02-09
Packaged: 2018-03-11 10:15:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3323798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lexi_con/pseuds/lexi_con
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Life is indescribably beautiful.</p><p>Life is indiscriminately cruel.</p><p>Tooru knows this. </p><p>That doesn’t change the fact that he doesn’t want it to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A beautiful world

Life is indescribably beautiful.

Life is indiscriminately cruel.

Tooru knows this. 

That doesn’t change the fact that he doesn’t want it to be. 

His childhood had been edged with harsh practice, faceless bystanders talking behind his small back, a father that didn’t have the strength to be by his side and a mother who loved him too much. He’d gone through life like a mindless doll; pleasing his sick mother with his hard work over black and white keys, humouring the girls that flocked around him and pretending he couldn’t hear those who said bad things when they thought he couldn’t hear. 

For 17 years Oikawa Tooru had been convinced that life was a miserable thing, something you walked through only to be laid in a wooden box and burned at the end. But in the spring just before he turned 18, he found that the world could be beautiful—and thereby his life as well. 

Sugawara Koushi, the boy who had stood on the riverbed in the sunset, playing a simple melody—a child’s lullaby— for a collection of kids staring at him in wonder. The sound of the violin had pulled Tooru from his usual path, but the moment he laid eyes on the graceful, gentle figure standing in the green grass time stopped. 

It had been April, but the sun had never felt so warm or bright, the sunset had never seemed romantic, not until that moment when Tooru heard his heart pound for the first time since he could remember. 

When the strings stopped spreading their sweet sound he remembered how to move, hurrying to stop the boy from leaving. 

"Sugawara Koushi," he had said with a smile, after questioning why Tooru was holding his arm as if he was a lifeline.

Soft hair, a gently killing smile and an adorable mole—the things Tooru noticed right away. But then there were Koushi’s  _eyes_. Somehow they weren’t ordinary eyes, somehow they were so much more  _alive_  than any other he had ever seen, glittering in the warm light bathing the scenery and burning with a quiet intensity. 

Tooru had been dumbstruck, overwhelmed by the feelings he’d never felt before blooming inside him, unable to find the words he usually had no problem with. He was even more lost when Koushi recognized him, saying they even went to the same school. Tooru refused to believe it until he searched all the classrooms in the building only to find the other in the class next to his own. 

Barely even aware of how it had turned out that way, they became friends—tentatively. Tooru insisted on hearing Koushi’s violin again, but he’d only gotten a secretive smile and a ticket. A ticket to a music competition.

Tooru went, because he was desperate to hear Koushi play again, eager to see what kind of tune he could produce when the entire world stopped to listen. 

Light. Fire. A burning determination that left Tooru breathless in his seat because it suddenly felt too hot to breathe, too bright to look but at the same time too entrancing to look away as Koushi’s music filled the room. The entire hall sat in stunned silence well after the last note had been dragged out by the horsehair, played so strongly a few strands had snapped and hung down on the floor as Koushi bowed to the audience that slowly erupted in a violent applause. 

Koushi won the audience hearts, but the judges were harsh on his performance that was even too abundant for Beethoven. It didn’t matter to Koushi though and Tooru knew why. The judges had been looking for a perfect copy, not a remake the original couldn’t possibly compare to. It didn’t matter because Koushi wanted to be his own, to let the audience hear  _him_ , not some old corpse that had been dead for longer than they cared to remember.

That’s how the spring season went, and it was soon May, too soon the day Koushi asked Tooru to play the piano for him. He couldn’t refuse, but at the same time couldn’t  _do it_. He was ashamed of the playing he did, robotic and awful, so dull compared to Koushi’s fiery rhythms. 

But Koushi convinced him, just like Tooru knew he would, and he played. Trying to listen to the sound the piano made, trying to feel the notes as his fingers pressed the keys in an uncomfortable daze. He had started sweating halfway through the piece, breathing heavily as he forced himself to focus on the score set up in front of him and how his fingers moved. 

When his shoulders had started to ache, tensed with the effort to try and play the piece perfectly, careful fingers had settled on his back, warmth of soft palms seeping through his shirt as the tension unwound ever so slowly inside him. 

Koushi had told him he didn’t have to play as if it was a question of life and death, and then laughed as Tooru blushed. 

"Let’s play together!" Koushi said, taking up his violin and urging Tooru’s hands to the piano again. He couldn’t hear his own notes, but he could hear the violin—no, he could hear  _Koushi,_  and it somehow wasn’t painful to play like that, listening to smouldering of the notes as they vibrated in the air.

They played together every day, because Koushi refused to give up on his goal to get Tooru in the limelight again, refusing the insistent protests of  _I’m not a genius_.

Koushi had waved him off and cone and entered them in a duet competition in July, forcing Tooru to participate and practice. They played and played, so much that even the callouses on the tip of Koushi’s fingers were raw. By the middle of June Tooru had begun to hear his own notes mingling with Koushi’s, subdued and timid in the light the other’s music was. It pushed him; as a musician he couldn’t let himself be outdone so easily, and he fought harder to share the space, wanting to stand on equal ground. 

Everything had been going so great, everything had been so beautiful in his previously dull world.

But life wasn’t so kind.

"It’s so amazing we are able to celebrate your 18th birthday, dear. Truly, it’s a blessing."

On June 9th, Koushi’s birthday, the colourful scenery crumbled around Oikawa. He had asked what Mrs Sugawara had meant by that, with tears in her eyes and voice quivering as she had stroked her son’s hair as if he was made of glass. The silence had laid itself thick over the party then, Koushi’s family and closest friends exchanging unsure and uncomfortable looks, no one daring to answer.

"I have a chronic heart condition. I can die any moment."

Tooru had stormed away, eye burning with tears and chest contracting in anger. He had been angry at Koushi, for not saying anything, angry at himself for not noticing, angry at the world for being so unfair. 

That’s how Oikawa Tooru knows the world is unbearably beautiful, so beautiful it’s also the cruellest. He didn’t dare to go see Koushi again. not even with their performance coming up and their last high school summer starting as if nothing had happened. 

Spending all his time in the music room, Tooru tapped away at the piano, the notes weak and broken in his ears. He forced his way through the piece, Romance Oubliée, over and over again, wishing that somehow, he’d hear the tunes of the violin accompanying his lonely tunes.

A sound, a yelp, outside the open window stopped him. He seized playing, but didn’t move to check, didn’t dare to look out the window and see if it was just his imagination or not.

The answer came soon anyway, in the form of a careful tone, so much more subdued that Tooru was used to hearing it. His fingers itched as he subconsciously counted the notes, trailing over the keys without pressing down as the violin went on, without the piano. 

As the song went on, the notes from outside the window got quieter, lonelier, so sad Tooru could hear the tremble in the player’s fingers. He thought he could wait until the song was finished, but when the rhythm suddenly broke in a missed note he couldn’t stop himself. He didn’t care that the chair toppled backwards onto the floor, didn’t care that the score flew across the room at the sudden wind his movements caused. He didn’t care as he pushed the curtain aside, Seeing Koushi standing there, the violin tucked under his chin, tears streaming down his face, falling onto the polished wood.

The music stopped, and the only sound around them was the ruffling of the wind and the distant buzz of the city. Koushi lowered his violin, bottom lip quivering in an effort to not sob despite the water rolling down his cheeks in steady streams.

"I’m so—

Tooru didn’t let him finish,  _couldn’t_  let him finish. Reaching out, he pulled Koushi close, carefully pressing their lips together. 

Tooru knew; Koushi’s fire and light was his desire to live. His desire to yet again prove life wrong, prove that he could live despite the unfortunate fate he had been given at birth. 

"I-I wanted to tell you…" Koushi sobbed out, pressing his forehead to Tooru’s, "but it’s  _hard_. I was—I  _am_ — afraid you’d leave.”

"I won’t," Tooru coos, threading his fingers through the other’s silver hair, "I will never leave, as long as you want me here."

Koushi smiled, good naturedly as if he  _wanted_  to believe those words but couldn’t. 

But Tooru was sure. If this is the one speck of beauty he would get in this awful world he would take it, for as long as he could, to hold and cherish inside his heart even when the moment had passed.


End file.
